I was around nine years old when I first encountered OCD.. I was playing kick-the-can with my older brother.. We lived in our parents guest house 'The Sea Urchin' overlooking Porthkidney Sands, in what was, and still is, the most beautiful part of West Cornwall in the UK: http://www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/hawkes-point/sea-urchin.htm (now six luxury flats!) After the final kick, we walked quite some way down the lane and then, for whatever reason, my brother suggested that something bad might happen if I didn't go back and kick the can one more time.. At first I just shrugged this off.. But then when I thought a bit deeper about this, my ten years old logic was; what if something bad might really happen?.. Can I take the risk? I walked back up the lane and kicked the can one more time just to be safe!. Thenceforward my OCD was born! Of course the term OCD did not exist in 1969 but never the less, from that day on my life was changed forever.. None of my family ever realised (or acknowledged) that I had a problem.. Though I suspect that my brother had a rough idea! In later life my OCD manifested it's self into such 'rituals' as: jumping up in the air so that both my feet were off the ground whilst turning off the light switch, ruining the neck of my beloved red electric guitar because there was just one dent, and I had to make it three then six then nine and so on!, pulling out several components from the circuit board of my rechargeable two channel remote control aeroplane transmitter (quite rare in those days).. When I was 19 years old, I started my fist proper band 'Axe'. We played many 500 seater venues (mostly schools, Town Halls etc) in the North West of England .. When I took a guitar solo, I had to turn up the guitar volume control as far as possible without hitting the stop.. If I hit it, I would have to turn the control fully off and try again! And so it went on with literally hundreds of similar invented rules and rituals and nearly all involving the numbers 3, 4 and 9? But for me OCD is at it's most disruptive not nessasarily when it manifests it's self physically, but rather mentally.. My personal experience is that as one matures, so does the illness! With a distinct tendency to go inwards and the 'rituals' more frequent: Obsessive counting, reading sentences multiple times (making it implausible to read a book), repeating thoughts, and even decidedly dangerous blinking rituals whilst driving the car! And even now at the ripish old age of 54, I can fairly accurately say that my OCD 'mental bouts' now occur approximately once every 5 minutes, and even occur whilst I'm asleep in the form of dreams! Overall, it's quite amazing that I still have (even though now quite small) any social life at all.. And to this day, none of my family and few of my friends realise I have OCD!..